Hundreds of teachers, parents and students briefly halted a Cleveland school board meeting Tuesday night, urging members to “let kids speak” and chanting “rubber stamp” — before the board voted unanimously to lay off 300 teachers and support staff.
At the start of the meeting, students marched around the auditorium of the Arnold Pinkney East Professional Center with handmade signs protesting layoffs. During the meeting, a rowdy crowd interrupted with questions and chants.
Cleveland Metropolitan School District (CMSD) Board Chair Sara Elaqad told the crowd that if the interruptions continued, the board would recess and return to vote with no presentation or discussion on the layoffs.
“We do not have public comment at this meeting,” Elaqad said, as people in the crowd booed and shook their signs. “We will have public comment at the next meeting, that will not change.”
Board members left the stage and returned to vote unanimously in favor of the layoffs as the crowd booed and turned their backs.
“It’s the kids that are most affected, it’s not about those of us who received notices,” said Mica Job, who was laid off and is also a CMSD parent. Job started the chant that led to the recess. “Tonight what I would like to see is that the board really sit with what we’re saying, sit with hearing the kids, allowing the kids to speak, encouraging the kids to speak.”
CMSD CEO Warren Morgan has called the layoffs, which are part of a sweeping school merger and closure plan, tough but necessary to prevent the district from coming under fiscal watch from the state. The district, he said, hasn’t reduced staff since 2011.
“A few things are happening,” Morgan told Signal Cleveland following the meeting. “We’re operating under a deficit, you have enrollment that has declined over time. We’ve closed 29 schools.”
Beyond cutting staff in buildings, the district is also finalizing $20 million in reductions to central office staff and budgets during the current budgeting process, Morgan said.
Union leaders, who represent over 60% of staff in the district, have argued that the district should have first cut highly-paid administrators and expensive consulting contracts before laying off the people who work directly with children on a daily basis. They’ve also questioned the severity of the budget crisis and whether the district was transparent with staff and the public about the cuts it intended to make when it approved the school closure plan last year.
Updated: Wednesday, April 15 at 1:54 p.m. with comments from board chair Sara Elaqad.
On Wednesday morning, Elaqad sent a letter to CMSD parents, staff and partner organizations, addressing the interruptions that led to the board voting without discussing Morgan’s rationale for the layoffs. “When those sessions are disrupted to the point of dysfunction, it is not a victory for transparency,” she wrote.
She acknowledged that the board had heard from many community members ahead of the meeting but that, in most cases, layoffs are made according to the district’s union contracts, so public comment doesn’t play a role in them. Broader factors like the state shortchanging CMSD on funding also played a role in the decision, Elaqad noted.
“As in many districts across Ohio and our nation, the Board and district leadership are operating in the face of an ongoing and escalating crisis in public education funding and demographic changes in our region,” she wrote. “That means we at times must make difficult decisions.”
The board is looking for another public opportunity for Morgan to share more on the layoff decisions. The presentation he would have given at the meeting and the resolution the board voted on, including the layoff lists, can be found here.
Who do the layoffs impact?
The board’s vote finalized the layoffs of 146 teachers and 132 other school support staff including classroom aides, school counselors and licensed practical nurses. [Correction: An earlier version of this story gave a different number for total other school support staff impacted.] It also voted not to renew the contracts of 37 principals, assistant principals and deans, for budgetary reasons, which is effectively a layoff.
The district is also cutting positions from its central office administration, bringing the total number of administrators who will lose their jobs up to 86. The board doesn’t have to vote on those jobs because they are considered “at will.” Around 45 or so other positions, like lunch aides, custodians and school secretaries, will make up the remaining layoffs, though the district is still working out the details with the unions that represent those workers.
Now, the district will start assigning staff on a building-by-building basis. During that process, the district will work with principals and union representatives to look at each school individually and figure out how many regular classroom and specialty teachers it needs. That means additional staff members could be laid off or some could be called back to fill in gaps.
Still, students like Brooklynn Lawson, a seventh grader at Campus International who came to protest, wanted board members to take the time to consider things from their perspectives before laying off the teachers who’ve helped them come to love subjects like pre-Algebra.
“You should take into consideration not only the opinions of the adults, but also the children because you are taking the children’s teachers away, not just the adults’ coworkers.”
Sandra Boyd, who helps students with social and emotional learning at Artemus Ward, also showed up to oppose the layoffs. Before being laid off Friday, she was with the district for over a decade, and she’s built deep relationships not only with students but also their families.
“You’re taking out their trusted adult that they go to,” she said. “Some of us have excellent rapport with our students and their parents. This is going to change the dynamics for the students.”
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